Wednesday, May 10, 2017

May 8, 2017 (washingtonexaminer.com) Sen. John
McCain and five other senators are urging President Trump to hold off on
meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin until he has first met with
Ukrainian leaders. The senators, who include Republican and Democratic members
of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, wrote to the president
after he and Putin reportedly discussed a first face-to-face meeting in July on
the sidelines of the G20 summit in Germany. Russia has incurred international
condemnation and stoked widespread concerns among the United States' European
allies for fueling a conflict in eastern Ukraine against the government of
President Petro Poroshenko.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is still
formulating its approach to Russian aggression and long-time commitments such
as the NATO alliance as questions continue to swirl over its relationship with
Moscow, which the U.S. intelligence community says meddled in the presidential
election last year. "Meeting with democratically elected representatives
from Ukraine would send a strong signal that the United States continues to
prioritize our relationship with longstanding allies, and will continue our
commitments to support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the
face of ongoing aggression," they wrote in the May 4 letter. Discussions
of the possible meeting between Trump and Putin were reported by the Kremlin,
but not included in a readout of the phone call released by the White House.

McCain and fellow Republicans James Inhofe and
Rob Portman, along with Democrats Bob Menendez, Jeanne Shaheen and Bob Casey,
praised the president for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's decision to attend
a NATO foreign ministers meeting in March, following reports he would not go. "Many
of our allies in Europe are anxiously awaiting policy direction from your
administration about our commitments to NATO and other institutions that
preserve the international order that has served as the framework for
international stability and security since the end of the Second World
War," the senators wrote.